Research Group

I am interested in wildlife ecology and conservation of arid ecosystems, particularly in the Horn of Africa. I am currently PhD student at the University of Wyoming and an EDGE fellow through the Zoological Society of London. My dissertation focuses on habitat selection and demography of hirola in northeastern Kenya.

Ali has worked with our research group for over 10 years. He is the consummate natural historian, with encyclopedic knowledge of darned near every critter--flora and fauna--on the UHURU project. Ali is absolutely essential to keeping our projects in Laikipia running smoothly while we're across the pond.

Alois "Ali" Wambua works both as the small mammal fundi for the UHURU experiment and the Mammalogy Section at the National Museums of Kenya. He will commence his MSc at Karatina University in 2016. His involvement with UHURU has rounded out our research group's triumvirate of high-quality Ali's.

For the past two years, Amos Muthee Kibara has worked as the lead technician for Ali's field work on hirola conservation in Ijara, Kenya. He joined our group from the Mount Kenya Conservancy where he helped manage a captive breeding program for highland bongos. We are glad Amos has sacrificed personal comfort to trade the balmy foothills of Mount Kenya for the blistering heat of Ijara for this work!

I graduated from Auburn University in 2009, and recently finished my Master's degree at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. Here, I studied niche partitioning mechanisms between sympatric carnivores in the eastern Andean foothills of Ecuador.

Wandering about downtown Cordoba, Argentina in 2007, I realized it had me: Nature Deficit Disorder. I needed to get out and into the mountains, into fresh air. I packed my backpack, locked my apartment, and headed to Patagonia for a few days. Here, it finally became obvious what career was calling me, and what I needed to do.

Brett is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in ecology at the University of Wyoming. He grew up in the St. Lawrence River valley of northern New York State and attended the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse University (SUNY ESF).

I was born and grew up in a small village in Keiyo District, Kenya, where I spent a lot of time tending livestock and fetching firewood in the bush. My interaction with nature and wild creatures during my childhood provided a source of wonder and inspiration toward the environment.

Christian Bopp (right) is working with Caroline on Ol Pejeta Conservancy to characterize the determinants of lion kill-sites. He is a senior undergraduate majoring in Zoology at UW. In this photo, Christian is simulating the role of a poacher (who typically wear oversized puffy blue coveralls), thereby enticing a special forces dog to gnaw on his arm.

Deborah is working with Seth Newsome and Jake to understand the causes and consequences of ecological generalism in small mammal communities. As you can see from her photo, Deborah relishes test tubes, beakers, pipettes, and fume hoods--you know, real science. We are lucky to have her on board!

I am a lucky fellow because I get paid to do what I love to do. I am an academic generalist and I try hard to be a conservation biologist, community ecologist, and mammalogist simultaneously. I am interested in both applied issues and basic questions in ecology. Through my research and that of our group, I try to understand how species interactions can inform wildlife conservation and management.

I earned my Bachelor’s and Master’s of Environmental Science from Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran. Since then, I have been involved in many research projects on the conservation of locally and globally threatened species like Persian wild ass, goitered gazelle, Indian gazelle, sand cat, Asiatic cheetah, and Asiatic houbara bustard. My dissertation seeks to understand ecological and socio-economic correlates surrounding the migrations of a globally-endangered equid, the onager, in south central Iran.

I am working toward my MSc in Wildlife Management at Moi University in Kenya, coadvised by Jake Goheen and Mordecai Ogada of the Laikipia Wildlife Forum. I am collaborating closely with Adam Ford to understand how the perceived risk of predation affects diet selectivity of impala, a mixed-feeder abundant throughout Laikipia.